This Photograph of Station Road, Ipoh is a classic with so many rickshaws busy in the street. It is 1906 and this is the very centre of Perak’s commercial operations.
It was here that companies like Chung Thye Pin Built his status building which was first Dr Connolly’s Medical Hall, then Oldfield’s and subsequently Georgetown Dispensary,
The Straits Trading Company the very centre of the Tin trade were here as well, as were, The Chartered Bank (The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China), The Mercantile Bank, Whiteaway and Laidlaw, the leading department store in Ipoh, Charles Grenier & Co Ltd, who originally imported British Made ‘Centaur’ pedal cycles. They also ran a small press as ‘Printers Stationers and Publishers’ with its head office here, with branches in Kuala Lumpur and Seremban, The Station Hotel, (as the railway station at that time was a single storey wood and atap building with no accommodation facilities.)
This indeed was THE place to have your head office.